It enjoys a massive lead over all pretenders to the search throne, yet Google finds itself "getting trounced" by upstarts in nearly everything else: blogging, video sharing, and social networking,
reports
MarketWatch. For the time being, Google can continue to grow both search usage and its overwhelming share of the market. This suits the company just fine--but downward pressure from
management, Wall Street analysts, and shareholders requires that eventually, one of its myriad forays into media-building pops. As the market for video sharing settles around YouTube and MySpace, that
looks increasingly unlikely. It also looks inconceivable that another pretender could unseat News Corp. as the king of social networks. "The problem with Google is everyone associates them with being
a search engine, but nothing beyond that," says Richard Fetyko of Merriman Curhan Ford & Co. However, it's early days in each of the burgeoning new consumer-generated media sectors, and Google
continues to blow Wall Street out of the water with its tremendous growth. As Fetyko points out: "Despite [Google's] resources, it's difficult to remain innovative; it's a lot easier for small
start-ups focusing on one or two products."
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